


The Proverbial Duck's Back

by rokhal



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Gen, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Self-Harm, Unreliable Narrator, sociopath!Napoleon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 10:42:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7264777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rokhal/pseuds/rokhal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Here's something that might cheer you up,” Solo said to Kuryakin. “Stick this pushpin into my arm.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Proverbial Duck's Back

**Author's Note:**

> I am assuming Uncle Rudy is Gaby's paternal uncle.

“Here's something that might cheer you up,” Solo said to Kuryakin. “Stick this pushpin into my arm.”

It was two in the morning, Amsterdam time, and they were alone in a shippinghouse office riffling through files in the dim red of Kuryakin's tactical flashlight. Teller was doing her imitation of an abandoned car across the street, and neither Solo nor Kuryakin had heard any guards deviate from the patrol routes they'd recorded on the previous two nights. It was an excellent time to discuss emotionally fraught topics with The Peril, first because Kuryakin was trapped alone with Solo and second because Kuryakin would not likely get them both killed if to avoid the discussion he attacked some furniture or ran away.

Kuryakin had been growing steadily more morose and miserable with each month in Solo's presence. Solo had first noticed after they'd survived the firefight in Istanbul. It was not improving. It frustrated him.

Kuryakin looked up slowly from the open file cabinet he was paging through with gloved fingers, and took in Solo's rolled up sleeve and the pushpin in his open palm. “What makes you think that would satisfy me,” he said, and returned to his browsing. He struck a likely file and pulled it out. Shipping manifests, and for the correct company. Solo arranged the pages under the tripod of Kuryakin's low-light camera and Kuryakin started the first exposure. They had tested the setup in the hotel before departing: with perfect stillness, and a long exposure, they should be able to record four pages into each negative without attracting attention by lighting up the window.

“Thought it might take the edge off,” Solo said, continuing the conversation such as it was. “Something's bothering you, Peril. Sooner you get it off your chest, the better off we all are.”

The Peril squeezed the remote to start the exposure, holding his watch under the flashlight to count the seconds. When he finished, he set the remote down very gently and curled his hands into fists at his sides. “I. Strongly regret.” Solo watched with interest as his gaze wandered throughout the dark corners of the room. “When you were in the electric chair. I was. Slow.”

Solo raised his eyebrows. This, he hadn't expected. “You're sorry.”

“I disliked you. Strongly, at the time. Until I used the device on Rudolph Teller, I did not know the . . . intensity of your pain. I was slow. You saw that I watched.”

Solo whistled softly. He replaced the pages in the file, in order, and laid out four more. He knew that he suffered mutely, like a wild animal. He'd been in no state to waste his acting talents on a purist like Uncle Rudy. “You know, I'd almost forgotten about that moment,” he said. “You can stop moping. I don't hold it against you.”

“You say this because we must work together.”

“No, no,” Solo said. Kuryakin was a mass of buttons to push and levers to pull, and he didn't even care that he'd just shown Solo a new one. Kuryakin was strong in several ways, fragile in many others. As an antiquities dealer, Solo appreciated that the most fragile items were generally the most priceless. There was no challenge at all in taking The Peril apart; rather, in conserving him. Thus his annoyance at Kuryakin's guilty funk. He picked up the pushpin again. “I am serious.”

“I am not sadist.”

“Well, I'm not a masochist, but I have my reasons.” And he had Kuryakin's attention. “When I was a kid, I charged my classmates fifty cents a stick,” and he jabbed the pushpin firmly into the meat of his forearm. Kuryakin hissed under his breath and reached halfway out toward him. He was very tense. Solo was a little worried for the camera's safety. He flipped his arm back and forth, the pushpin sticking out of his skin like a button on his shirt, then pulled it free and pressed on the spot to stop the blood from welling. “I always had plenty of cash for sweets. I had no idea for years why none of the other kids let people stick them with pins for money, though. I thought they were too stupid, if you believe that.”

“You do not feel pain?” Kuryakin asked.

“Oh, I do,” Solo said. “But I don't—” He made as if to stick himself again with the pin, and The Peril's hands twitched in reflex at the gesture. “Don't flinch. Do you have any idea how much chocolate fifty cents bought in 1935 in America? Of course not—more than enough to make up for a sore arm, though. You have had chocolate before?”

“Yes.”

“In the Army they liked my shooting, not so much my everything else. That was the first time I was ever beaten so hard I was still laid up in pain the next day. Wasn't until then that I figured out what punishment was really for, you know. To make you stop doing a thing. I think maybe, if my dad hadn't been in prison, he might have controlled me better than my mother—her smacks hurt, but they just weren't worth my while to avoid. I thought they were, you know, just the cost of doing business.”

“I will not trade stories with you.”

“Of course not, that would destroy what little mystery you have.” There was a crackling of knuckles. “Your fists, which I respect, are in no way mysterious. As I was saying—”

“In your Army. You earned rank and expertise to sell treasure of Nazi victims on black market after the Great War. Robbed the dead twice.”

Solo looked up from the sheaf of papers in his hand. “I have endured a lot of lectures on the subject by a lot of different people. Unless you'd like to draw me a diagram, I doubt yours would make any more sense. I have a point I'd like to get to.”

“In American Army.”

“Yes.” He laid out four square of sheets under the tripod, and Kuryakin held down the shutter. “The war was miserable. The mud, and the shelling. Very cold and wet, very unpleasant. Food wasn't too good either. Saw a lot of people I liked die, probably ten different ones. And that's the kind of thing that scars a man, so they say. Shock. Misery. Loss. The poppies of the field, etcetera etcetera. And I was paying attention, by now, to all these people I liked who had survived, and most of them did seem badly damaged once you got them drinking. And that was when I started to see that what _they_ said, about pain and fear and hatred, you know, and about honesty and compassion and loyalty, all that wasn't just a theory cooked up by schoolteachers and preachers. It was real. For most people.”

“Not you,” said The Peril.

Solo smiled his most perfect smile. “Not me. So see, Peril, it's a two-edged sword. Or a two-way street—two sides to the coin. On the one side, in my youth I was such a terror that my mother threatened to have me arrested if I ever returned to her house when I left at the age of seventeen. On the other, I don't think I have ever hated more than three people in my entire life. I don't anger easily, and I like people. I didn't hate Uncle Rudy when I was sitting in his chair; I'm not going to hold a couple seconds of passivity against you.”

“Rudy was a willing Nazi collaborator and torturer,” Kuryakin protested. “He was a worm.”

“He was just doing what he enjoyed,” Solo shrugged. “Unfortunate though his tastes may have been. Very unfortunate that he got to do it to me, that was unpleasant. But the burns were minor. I won't grudge you a couple seconds taking in the sight.”

“Victoria Vinciguerra. Did you hate her?”

Solo warmed at the memory. Their relationship had been a delight from start to finish. “Not at all.”

“The things you said about her dead husband—you invented them to hurt her.”

Solo puzzled a moment, remembering the exchange. “Oh, that. That was just, you know, a challenge. Like two silverbacks drumming their chests in the jungle. I guarantee her feelings weren't hurt, not until I told her about the missile. That got to her.”

They carried on, spreading out and photographing shipping manifests, four by four, until the folder was finished.

“Cowboy,” Kuryakin said gently as he replaced the file, “I do not think you know very much about regret.”

Solo sighed. What they had here was a failure to communicate. There are some men you just can't reach. “Peril,” he said, laying a hand cautiously on Kuryakin's thrumming shoulder, “I accept your apology. All is forgiven.”

Kuryakin shook his head, but a smile flickered under his stoic mask, and his tremors eased.

**Author's Note:**

> The Man From UNCLE stood out for its vivid characters and the humor that arose from them, Kuryakin, Solo, and Victoria Vinciguerra especially: Kuryakin as a man who feels too much, and Solo and Vinciguerra as genuine-article sociopaths. Solo and Vinciguerra's flat affect, lack of shame, frank glee in pushing people's buttons, and unshakable self-confidence makes perfect sense under this interpretation, so much so that I think it is the intent of the filmmakers. 
> 
> I am in no way a mental health professional. I did read M. E. Thomas's memoir Confessions of a Sociopath, and I encourage other writers to do the same, as sociopathy is extremely common fictional trope as well as a real medical and psychological phenomenon. The most valuable take-away point is that a sociopath is not a "normal" person whose intrinsic goodness has been broken or covered up. A sociopath has a variation in brain anatomy that carries with it an inability to intuitively absorb society's norms of good and bad behavior, and an inability to experience social control responses such as shame.
> 
> Included in this variation on brain function is a reduced fear and flinch response. According to Thomas, sociopaths have a reduced ability to learn fear after experiencing negative consequences; they're not evil, they're not "cat people," there is actually a broad and fundamental difference in their ability to learn to protect themselves from danger. M. E. Thomas claims that this is partly protective against PTSD. She is also not a mental health professional.
> 
> In no way do I advocate beating sociopaths harder in order to teach them goodness. Only someone who was born with no moral compass whatsoever, or who has cultivated hate in their heart, would advocate such a thing.
> 
> Sociopaths and neurotypicals are both capable of good and evil. Because sociopathy is thought to be defined by the lack of moral intuition, goodness and kindness from a sociopath is generally intentional.


End file.
